What drives the high performance leader, from personal fitness and wellbeing to productivity and performance?
The challenge for CEOs have never been greater – not just to recover from pandemic, to unlock new technologies, to embrace new agendas like sustainability, to engage employees and new audiences, to drive new innovation and growth, and create the organisation of tomorrow
… but also to personally cope with the pressure of so many challenges, in a world which keeps changing, and where physical and emotional agility have become key.
In this session we explore some of the tools and techniques which Steven contributes to IE Business School’s Global Advanced Management Program (Global AMP), as one of our 40 expert faculty who deliver the program.
We also explore Insights from his new book, The Daily Reset: 366 Nudges to Move Your Life Forward.
If you’re an ambitious business leader who wants to achieve more, but also have a better life, this session is for you!
The Global Advanced Management Program is IE Business School’s flagship program for executives stepping up to lead the future of business.
It’s time for leaders to step up, to create a better future
It’s for leaders who are stepping up to become the next CEO, or maybe to join the C-suite, to run a business unit, or getting ready to do so. It’s for leaders who seek to be re-inspired, re-energised ready for an incredible future – to drive business-wide transformation, to reimagine their industry, to change the way their entire business and market works.
If you can see yourself leading your business into the future … if you can start to imagine a business of the future, beyond that currently imagined by your leaders and peers. … then this is for you.
New ideas for leaders to accelerate business recovery
The Global AMP is more relevant than ever, as the global Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted every market and business, demanding that leaders step up to think and act in new ways. As people around the world have shifted to digital technologies at home and work, we are likely to see an acceleration in new business models, new ways of working, and new lifestyles.
The pandemic has acting as a catalyst for innovation, not just to survive through crisis and uncertainty, but to adapt to a rapidly changing world. Indeed it is no surprise that 57% of companies are founded in a downturn, and most innovations are born out of crisis too. Now, more than ever is the time when business needs leaders with new mindsets, new skills, and who can combine advanced learning with simultaneous business transformation.
With a more liquid learning style, more accessible and convenient
To make the Global AMP program even more accessible, practical, and applied to the changing needs of you and your business, we have enhanced the format. It will now take on a much more liquid learning structure, so that you can continue to work, and accelerate your leadership development, during these uncertain yet important times. The program will combine online and physical formats over a longer period, enabling you to learn more, apply more, and get more practical value from the experience.
The content is entirely updated, anticipating the changing needs of business and its people as we emerge from crisis, and through the next decade – from the megatrends that drive global markets and intelligent technologies, to the convergence of markets and emergence of new business models, new ways of working and the challenges of leading for today, and tomorrow. The program takes on a more dynamic learning style, helping your to explore how to transform yourself and your business, for a world of rapid and continuous change.
Delivered by top business leaders, thinkers and experts
I will be joined by some of the world’s most inspiring and thoughtful faculty. This year it includes Steven Macgregor, and many more:
- Jim Snabe, chairman of Siemens and Maersk, one of the world’s top leaders
- Tendayi Viki, a psychologist-based innovator, partner of Strategyzer
- Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, the world’s top project manager
- Chris Rangen, strategist and business transformation leader
- Terence Mauri, defining what is bold and brave leadership
- Verónica Reyero, anthropologist of a more human future.
- Mark Esposito, leading futurist and AI pioneer
- Terence Tse, expert on the future of finance and healthcare
- Juan Carlos Pastor, leading on authentic leadership; media expert
- Lola Martinez, media expert, on storytelling and presenting
- Marcos Cajina, on the neuroscience of emotional engagement
In addition to exploring the very latest business ideas and theories, the program is highly personalised in two ways – a personal leadership coaching program helps you to make sense of your own strengths and style, and coaches work with you to develop this, to respond to the new needs, and to prepare to step up to business leadership – and a personal “Gamechanger” project in which we work with you over the entire duration of the program to help you develop your own blueprint for transforming the future of your business, or industry.
This seminar, for board members and executive leaders, introduces the key ingredients of “leading change” in today’s fast and dynamic world. It is specifically for Alturki Holding and other invited guests.
Download a summary of the keynote: Leading Change by Peter Fisk
Alturki Holding is a premier investor and partner of choice for building sustainable businesses in the Middle East and North Africa region. Sectors include Construction and Building Materials, Infrastructure, Transportation, Information and Communications Technologies, Oil-Field Tools and Services, Real Estate, plus new trending industries such as Healthcare IT, and Education Technology. The focus is on companies that aim to positively transform business models and society through new digital technologies and harnessing the potential of the fourth industrial revolution.
Agenda:
Making sense of change and uncertainty – finding new opportunities for innovation and growth
-
- More change in the next 10 year than last 250
- How every market is shaken-up, energy to finance, auto to food
- Riding the megatrends, how to embrace the big strategic global shifts
Competing in markets of relentless change – learning from the world’s most innovative companies
-
- Having a growth not fixed mindset, inspired by Satya Nadella and Jessica Tan
- Inspired innovation from Haier, Reliance Jio, and Tesla
- Thinking from the outside in to reframe your business, and redefine your purpose
Driving business transformation as a core capability – build a portfolio to win today and tomorrow
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- Starting from the future back, then working now forwards
- Inspired transformation by Orsted, DBS and Cemex
- Building a future-today portfolio for relentless change, like Fujifilm
Leaders in a world of change – the challenge of seizing and shaping the future to your advantage
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- Leading in a complex and uncertain world, inspired by Jeff Bezos and Masa Son
- 7 ways to become an ambidexterous leader, thinking long and short-term
- Being curious, creative and courageous
Get started
Find out more about keynotes, workshops and programs: email peterfisk@peterfisk.com
The Future Book Forum is now in its 8th year, and I will be hosting it again from Canon’s European base in Munich, joined by a live audience, and many more publishers joining online from across the world.
This year is a little different – we start with an “Idea Challenge“.
We’re seeking innovative ideas to make the printed book business more economically, socially and environmentally sustainable. The best ideas will be presented and explored at the Future Book Forum, with cash prizes to the winners.
The challenge is open to everyone outside and inside the book industry – including all publishing and printing companies – so please get involved and make a difference!
More generally, this year’s theme is about driving sustainable innovation in every aspect of the publishing industry – how books are made, distributed, accessed – and the broader impact which they can have on our lives.
I will be joined by Jessica Lobo from the UN who will talk about the specific relevance of the 17 SDGs to your business, and also by Andy Hunter, the entrepreneur who has created Bookshop.org, enabling local physical bookstores to reach a global online audience.
We’ll also be joined by Joerg Engelstaedter, Mark Allin and Sven Fund, to talk about the current state of the industry, and what comes next. We’ll be building on the themes of previous years – including new business models, new services and new communities.
Here’s a reminder of some of the previous years:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qm9lfIqpyyM
The sustainable challenge for publishers
“Leaders of business. This is your wake-up call. You’ve been living on borrowed time. Raping the natural world of its resources, and leaving a toxic mess in its place. These weather patterns are not freaks, they are the world you have created. Blinding the man on the street with your superficial innovations and image. What about the sweatshops, the emissions, the packaging, the greed? It doesn’t look good”
Sustainability is the best opportunity for business to drive smarter innovation and profitable growth.
Peter Fisk’s book People Planet Profit explores how to address social and environmental challenges through customers and brands in a way that has more impact than politicians or environmentalists ever could. It introduces a more inspired, more balanced approach to business. Full of case studies and practical tools, it is the essential guide for managers. People do not trust business. They increasingly see companies as irresponsible, greedy and inhuman. Climate change and economic downturn have accelerated new expectations.
Businesses need to reengage people, to understand their new priorities, rethink their role and propositions, work in new ways, and enable people to do more themselves. Resolving the many paradoxes faced by customers who want the best things but also to do “the right thing” and business leaders who want to grow but in more responsible ways.
There are many books about sustainability – mostly around the worthy themes of “reduce, recycle, reuse”. However this goes beyond that initial phases to “rethink” business.
It is positive not negative, about opportunities not problems, driven by creativity not compliance, a whole business challenge, not left to a few people. It is about connecting social, environment and economic challenges, to achieve a new balance, that is more different from competitors and inspiring your people. And its about building brands in way that builds capacity rather than just making sales, enabling people to do more for themselves and their worlds, rather than just buy your product or service.
People Planet Profit is about that these three agendas. But more importantly, about how they connect. How doing more for the Planet can create more for People and more for Profit. Innovation is about making new connections, and that is what this book is about, and why sustainability is the biggest catalyst, for more enlightened innovation, and more enduring growth.
- Purpose beyond Profits : Business should be about making people’s lives better, defining an inspiring purpose and turning promises into reality.
- Strategies for Growth : Business strategy must focus on finding markets with sustainable growth, creating differentiation by doing good and new business models for a new world.
- Inspiring Leadership : Leaders of the new business world are the catalysts of change, the conscience of a better business, and facilitators of rethinking and innovation.
- Conscience Consumers : There is a new consumer agenda, based around me, my world, and the world. Business must create more capacity, enabling people to do more.
- Sustainable Innovation : Resolving the paradox between what people dream of, and what is good for all of us, between what makes most money and what is the right thing to do.
- Engaging consumers : People are engaged through enlightened dialogue, building networks to enable collaborative actions, and delivering a more authentic consumer experience
- Sustainable Operations : Businesses must learn to work better together – good sourcing, transporting and producing, embracing the power of sustainable energy and technology.
- Delivering Performance : Certification, labels and sustainable impacts, linking sustainability to business results, managing business performance and reputation
- Transforming Business : Making sustainable change happen, starting by articulating a better case for change, commercial and caring, and managing the implementation
- Sustainable Futures : Leading in the new business world is about sustainable innovation and lifestyles, where business and brands are the new force for positive change
The book ends with a vision of the future business leader, Joachim Cruz, the CEO of BlueSky, an innovative travel business based in Copenhagen. He embraces the new agendas, the new technologies, the new capital markets. But he also has time to smile, to pick up his kids from school, and sit back and enjoy his home-grown glass of Tempranillo.
- Download: People Planet Profit : The Manifesto
- Download: People Planet Profit : The 7 Transformations
- Download: People Planet Profit : The Business Case
- Download: People Planet Profit : The Executive Development Programme
Covid-19
How has the recent pandemic challenged and heightened our thinking about these issues – purpose, sustainability, ESG and CSR, inequality, climate crisis and much more?
At the most fundamental level, Covid-19 has revealed three things:
1. Planet: Human activity is strongly related to climate change. The lockdown has resulted in rare sightings of blue skies from Beijing to Delhi, and worldwide CO2 emissions are predicted to fall by 8% in 2020.
2. People: COVID-19 has been hailed as the “big equalizer,” but the reality is that we aren’t equally resilient as a society. Socio-economic status is strongly related to vulnerabilities of all sorts, with the poor and underprivileged in harm’s way to a disproportionate extent.
3. Profit: We cannot survive for long without economic activity and the creation of financial value. Millions of businesses are failing in the face of the pandemic and as many as 40% of businesses may not reopen after this disaster.
In essence, we need to manage climate-related risks, strengthen our social fabric and inspire economic activity that creates value for humankind if we are to create a world that is sustainable and well-equipped to combat impending crises.
So what will it take to achieve this symbiosis between people, planet and profit – also referred to as the “triple bottom line” – in contrast to the single bottom line of profit alone?
For starters, we must accept a basic truism: in a world of finite resources, maximizing private gain inevitably leads to collective loss – that is, the loss of common goods, a phenomenon known as the tragedy of the commons. For example if, in a bid to boost profits, global multinationals build and run factories but do not pay for the pollution they create, we get global warming. The collective is more important than the individual.
If Covid-19 has taught us anything about how to surmount our socio-environmental challenges, it is that each one of us – as individuals, companies or governments – needs to take ownership of our future. Being a bystander is no longer an option. Yet, if you’re like one of the thousands of executives I have encountered over the years, you likely believe that sustainability – that is, the wellbeing of our planet and its people – is important, but it’s “someone else’s problem”. In companies with a sustainability department, everyone points to that department as being responsible for everything sustainability-related.
Why is it that something as important as sustainability is given short shrift by so many in the corporate sphere? Over the past years, I’ve visited dozens of large, publicly listed companies and spoken with hundreds of employees to try to find out. I’ve been to head offices, mines, stores and factories, travelling from Madagascar to India to Chile’s Atacama Desert.
1. Find more purpose
To take ownership of our post-pandemic future, businesses must start by asking the all-important question of corporate purpose – or “why do we do what we do”? Leaders must articulate how the firm creates value for all stakeholders, not just shareholders, and accept that profit is the consequence of such value creation. This process of defining purpose makes it clear that businesses exist to serve society and not the other way round, and the link to sustainability becomes clear. As Paul Polman, ex-CEO of Unilever, said: “Sustainability is totally driven by purpose. It starts with the overall firm belief that we are here to serve society … and only by doing that well, we can make all our stakeholders, including our shareholders, happy.”
How can leaders discover that “true north” – their company’s purpose? Often, it happens via epiphanies or first-hand experience on the front lines. Francesco Starace, the CEO of Enel, one of the largest energy companies in the world, had his epiphany while working in the Middle East in the mid-1980’s. He realized that an energy company’s job was not to foist new habits on people, but rather to enable them to do what they wanted to do in the first place. Crossing an emotional barrier, as Starace did in the 1980s, and identifying with a company’s purpose in a new and personal way enables leaders to build their own sense of sustainability ownership and address the critical problems of our world. “Sooner or later,” as Starace told me, “you have to face up to the facts about why you do what you do.”
2. Engage all stakeholders
Armed with a sense of purpose and a set of concrete sustainability goals, your company is ready to create motivation and ability among your stakeholders, and to help integrate those sustainability goals into their daily work routines.
Market sustainability to stakeholders as an opportunity to contribute to the future wellbeing of the company and the world. To entice employees and other stakeholders to engage in sustainability, appeal sometimes to the head (this is the smart thing to do), other times to the heart (right thing to do), and often both. Lisa Jackson, vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives at Apple told me: “The easiest and most fun part of sustainability is when you can go to the business – as we have done now several times – and say, ‘It will save you money to reduce the amount of scrap metal that is produced. It will save you money to think about packaging in a different way’.”
Alongside motivation, you also have to create the ability to act sustainably. Increase the capability of your workforce by putting systems, structures and training in place that make it easier to act sustainably. Give your stakeholders the tools, confidence and freedom they need. In a word, make sustainability everybody’s job. “If there’s one exception, everyone thinks they’re the exception,” said Keith Weed, Unilever’s chief marketing officer and head of sustainability at the time.
3. Achieve more together
Form broader industry collaborations to address complex problems. Such collaborations, often with traditional competitors, help create the systemic changes that our planet and its people need – and that businesses need, too. “If everything fails around us, we fail too,” said the chief sustainability officer of Marks & Spencer.
Topics such as deforestation, effluent in waterways, or buying minerals from the Congo can only be addressed by a consortium, in which each party, again, needs to rise above self-interest and think about the wellbeing of the collective. Paul Polman has been quick to point out: “We don’t have the right level of cooperation at the global governance level to deal with these issues, and I hope that the business community will step up and fill that void.”
Watching the pandemic unfold before us and seeing both the healing effects of our slowed economic activity on the skies and our planet as well as the horrific plight of our fellow human beings, leaves most of us “uncomfortably numb” and yearning to do something about securing the future. Issues such as global warming, inequality and poverty – as outlined in the SDGs – are gaining urgency. Taking ownership of addressing such issues should form the new leadership mandate.
More from Peter Fisk
- Article: Adidas to Allbirds – sustainable fashion brands embracing the circular economy
- Article: Upcycling. Reinventing fashion to be more sustainable, interesting and unique
- Article: P&G’s Ambition 2030, sustainable innovation as “a force for a good and a force for growth”
- Case study: Agua Bendita. Handmade swimwear from the colourful scraps of Colombia
- Case study: All Birds. The world’s most comfortable shoes
- Case study: Bolt Threads. Synthetic spider silk for a better luxury world
- Case study: Positive Luxury. The butterfly mark you can trust
More from outside
- Report: New Green Radicals: Alstom to Toast Ale, Loop to Lush, TerraCycle to Triodos
- Survey: The World’s Most Sustainable Companies 2020: Denmark’s Orsted tops the list
“Business for a Better World”
How can we reimagine business as a positive force for good? How can we embrace the most difficult environmental and social challenges, as new opportunities to drive competitive advantage and enlightened progress?
Covid-19 has already become a catalyst for profound change in customer and investor mindsets. How can your business engage with these new agendas – reallocating capital and resources, accelerating decarbonisation, the new plastics economy, clean energy tech, digital healthcare, and consumer wellbeing?
EBF21 brings together business leaders and global thinkers to explore how organisations can think smarter, to address the big challenges of our time, in fresh and practical ways.
This is not just another conference. Instead it is
- a thought-provoking meeting of business minds, exploring new possibilities
- inspired by new global practices, and local case studies
- learning from each other, how we can act individually and collectively
- taking a practical workshop-style format, with expert catalysts
- working together to develop new business solutions for positive impact.
Denmark is already home to many of the world’s most sustainable companies, but how can we go further, better and faster? What can we learn from Europe, and beyond? How are start-up entrepreneurs creating new markets, and equally, how are corporate leaders driving innovation and transformational change?
EBF21 will build on the UN’s 17 SDGs, familiar to most of us, to also consider the new “Good Life Goals”, making the strategic initiatives more human and relevant – from equality and inclusion, to climate and oceans, health and wellbeing.
How can a better world not just be an idealistic challenge, but a strategic goal for every business? And how can this new thinking create a better business too?
Agenda
This year’s format is built around 3 practical action labs – bringing together a number of “catalyst” speakers, with their different ideas and perspectives, and then working together with the audience on a range of tools from the better business “playbook”. At the end of the three labs you will develop a new blueprint for your future better business.
So who are these catalytic speakers?
We kick off with a live report from COP26, the UN’s Climate Change Conference, where global leaders are meeting on the same day in Glasgow, to address the critical challenges of climate change, and greater action by the world. Diane Holdorf, from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development will open the EBF, and also talk about the their new “Transform” agenda.
Then, from New York, we’ll be exploring the exciting world of sustainable fashion with Malaika Haaning, who has a passion for beautifully designed clothing made with zero waste, and how this contrasts with a far more industrial business like Orsted.
The Danish energy business, of course, has been on an incredible journey in recent years, and was the 2020 “world’s most sustainable company”. Martin Neubert joins us to share Orsted’s journey, while Lotte Hansen defines what matters most right now.
Ultimately, this is a challenge of reimagining our businesses, and how they can help accelerate the shift to a better world. Sustainable innovation is therefore at the heart of any strategy to develop business for a better world. Harvard professor Mark Esposito will focus on how technologies can transform the way in which we address sustainable challenges.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN3YWhZaAwI
Novo Nordisk and Schneider Electric are two great sustainable innovators – from products and services to platforms and business models. Camilia Sylvester and Michael Seremet explain how it works, in Schneider’s case, making it the world’s most sustainable company in 2021.
The forum concludes with the challenge of implementation, how to make it happen in your business. Philip Morris has a fascinating challenge, to transform itself from a tobacco to a health business, a transformation from bad to good, you could say.
GSK’s head of projects, Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, explains the secret of making sustainable transformation happen. And there are more great stories, for example like Plastix, les by Hans Axel Kristensen, which is cleaning the ocean’s of waste fishing nets to create beautiful new items, like sustainable clothing!
This is your wake-up call!
“Leaders of business. This is your wake-up call. You’ve been living on borrowed time. Raping the natural world of its resources, and leaving a toxic mess in its place. These weather patterns are not freaks, they are the world you have created. Blinding the man on the street with your superficial innovations and image. What about the sweatshops, the emissions, the packaging, the greed? It doesn’t look good”
Sustainability is the best opportunity for business to drive smarter innovation and profitable growth.
Covid-19 as the wake-up call
How has the recent pandemic challenged and heightened our thinking about these issues – purpose, sustainability, ESG and CSR, inequality, climate crisis and much more?
At the most fundamental level, Covid-19 has revealed three things:
1. Planet: Human activity is strongly related to climate change. The lockdown has resulted in rare sightings of blue skies from Beijing to Delhi, and worldwide CO2 emissions are predicted fell by 8% in 2020.
2. People: Covid-19 has been hailed as the “big equalizer,” but the reality is that we aren’t equally resilient as a society. Socio-economic status is strongly related to vulnerabilities of all sorts, with the poor and underprivileged in harm’s way to a disproportionate extent.
3. Profit: We cannot survive for long without economic activity and the creation of financial value. Millions of businesses are failing in the face of the pandemic and as many as 40% of businesses may not reopen after this disaster.
In essence, we need to manage climate-related risks, strengthen our social fabric and inspire economic activity that creates value for humankind if we are to create a world that is sustainable and well-equipped to combat impending crises.
So what will it take to achieve this symbiosis between people, planet and profit – also referred to as the “triple bottom line” – in contrast to the single bottom line of profit alone?
For starters, we must accept a basic truism: in a world of finite resources, maximizing private gain inevitably leads to collective loss – that is, the loss of common goods, a phenomenon known as the tragedy of the commons. For example if, in a bid to boost profits, global multinationals build and run factories but do not pay for the pollution they create, we get global warming. The collective is more important than the individual.
If Covid-19 has taught us anything about how to surmount our socio-environmental challenges, it is that each one of us – as individuals, companies or governments – needs to take ownership of our future. Being a bystander is no longer an option. Yet, if you’re like one of the thousands of executives I have encountered over the years, you likely believe that sustainability – that is, the wellbeing of our planet and its people – is important, but it’s “someone else’s problem”. In companies with a sustainability department, everyone points to that department as being responsible for everything sustainability-related.
Why is it that something as important as sustainability is given short shrift by so many in the corporate sphere? Over the past years, I’ve visited dozens of large, publicly listed companies and spoken with hundreds of employees to try to find out. I’ve been to head offices, mines, stores and factories, travelling from Madagascar to India to Chile’s Atacama Desert.
1. Find more purpose
To take ownership of our post-pandemic future, businesses must start by asking the all-important question of corporate purpose – or “why do we do what we do”? Leaders must articulate how the firm creates value for all stakeholders, not just shareholders, and accept that profit is the consequence of such value creation. This process of defining purpose makes it clear that businesses exist to serve society and not the other way round, and the link to sustainability becomes clear. As Paul Polman, ex-CEO of Unilever, said: “Sustainability is totally driven by purpose. It starts with the overall firm belief that we are here to serve society … and only by doing that well, we can make all our stakeholders, including our shareholders, happy.”
How can leaders discover that “true north” – their company’s purpose? Often, it happens via epiphanies or first-hand experience on the front lines. Francesco Starace, the CEO of Enel, one of the largest energy companies in the world, had his epiphany while working in the Middle East in the mid-1980’s. He realized that an energy company’s job was not to foist new habits on people, but rather to enable them to do what they wanted to do in the first place. Crossing an emotional barrier, as Starace did in the 1980s, and identifying with a company’s purpose in a new and personal way enables leaders to build their own sense of sustainability ownership and address the critical problems of our world. “Sooner or later,” as Starace told me, “you have to face up to the facts about why you do what you do.”
2. Engage all stakeholders
Armed with a sense of purpose and a set of concrete sustainability goals, your company is ready to create motivation and ability among your stakeholders, and to help integrate those sustainability goals into their daily work routines.
Market sustainability to stakeholders as an opportunity to contribute to the future wellbeing of the company and the world. To entice employees and other stakeholders to engage in sustainability, appeal sometimes to the head (this is the smart thing to do), other times to the heart (right thing to do), and often both. Lisa Jackson, vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives at Apple told me: “The easiest and most fun part of sustainability is when you can go to the business – as we have done now several times – and say, ‘It will save you money to reduce the amount of scrap metal that is produced. It will save you money to think about packaging in a different way’.”
Alongside motivation, you also have to create the ability to act sustainably. Increase the capability of your workforce by putting systems, structures and training in place that make it easier to act sustainably. Give your stakeholders the tools, confidence and freedom they need. In a word, make sustainability everybody’s job. “If there’s one exception, everyone thinks they’re the exception,” said Keith Weed, Unilever’s chief marketing officer and head of sustainability at the time.
3. Achieve more together
Form broader industry collaborations to address complex problems. Such collaborations, often with traditional competitors, help create the systemic changes that our planet and its people need – and that businesses need, too. “If everything fails around us, we fail too,” said the chief sustainability officer of Marks & Spencer.
Topics such as deforestation, effluent in waterways, or buying minerals from the Congo can only be addressed by a consortium, in which each party, again, needs to rise above self-interest and think about the wellbeing of the collective. Paul Polman has been quick to point out: “We don’t have the right level of cooperation at the global governance level to deal with these issues, and I hope that the business community will step up and fill that void.”
Watching the pandemic unfold before us and seeing both the healing effects of our slowed economic activity on the skies and our planet as well as the horrific plight of our fellow human beings, leaves most of us “uncomfortably numb” and yearning to do something about securing the future. Issues such as global warming, inequality and poverty – as outlined in the SDGs – are gaining urgency. Taking ownership of addressing such issues should form the new leadership mandate.
As a preview, here’s what happen in previous EBFs …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdCLUbml9q8&t=6s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJBNVfRvm0I
Join us at this year’s European Business Forum.
Download Peter Fisk’s masterclass: The New Leaders
“Leaders of business. This is your wake-up call. You’ve been living on borrowed time. Raping the natural world of its resources, and leaving a toxic mess in its place. These weather patterns are not freaks, they are the world you have created. Blinding the man on the street with your superficial innovations and image. What about the sweatshops, the emissions, the packaging, the greed? It doesn’t look good”
Sustainability is the best opportunity for business to drive smarter innovation and profitable growth.
Peter Fisk’s book People Planet Profit explores how to address social and environmental challenges through customers and brands in a way that has more impact than politicians or environmentalists ever could. It introduces a more inspired, more balanced approach to business. Full of case studies and practical tools, it is the essential guide for managers.People do not trust business. They increasingly see companies as irresponsible, greedy and inhuman. Climate change and economic downturn have accelerated new expectations.
Businesses need to reengage people, to understand their new priorities, rethink their role and propositions, work in new ways, and enable people to do more themselves. Resolving the many paradoxes faced by customers who want the best things but also to do “the right thing” and business leaders who want to grow but in more responsible ways.
There are many books about sustainability – mostly around the worthy themes of “reduce, recycle, reuse”. However this goes beyond that initial phases to “rethink” business.
It is positive not negative, about opportunities not problems, driven by creativity not compliance, a whole business challenge, not left to a few people. It is about connecting social, environment and economic challenges, to achieve a new balance, that is more different from competitors and inspiring your people. And its about building brands in way that builds capacity rather than just making sales, enabling people to do more for themselves and their worlds, rather than just buy your product or service.
People Planet Profit is about that these three agendas. But more importantly, about how they connect. How doing more for the Planet can create more for People and more for Profit. Innovation is about making new connections, and that is what this book is about, and why sustainability is the biggest catalyst, for more enlightened innovation, and more enduring growth.
- Purpose beyond Profits : Business should be about making people’s lives better, defining an inspiring purpose and turning promises into reality.
- Strategies for Growth : Business strategy must focus on finding markets with sustainable growth, creating differentiation by doing good and new business models for a new world.
- Inspiring Leadership : Leaders of the new business world are the catalysts of change, the conscience of a better business, and facilitators of rethinking and innovation.
- Conscience Consumers : There is a new consumer agenda, based around me, my world, and the world. Business must create more capacity, enabling people to do more.
- Sustainable Innovation : Resolving the paradox between what people dream of, and what is good for all of us, between what makes most money and what is the right thing to do.
- Engaging consumers : People are engaged through enlightened dialogue, building networks to enable collaborative actions, and delivering a more authentic consumer experience
- Sustainable Operations : Businesses must learn to work better together – good sourcing, transporting and producing, embracing the power of sustainable energy and technology.
- Delivering Performance : Certification, labels and sustainable impacts, linking sustainability to business results, managing business performance and reputation
- Transforming Business : Making sustainable change happen, starting by articulating a better case for change, commercial and caring, and managing the implementation
- Sustainable Futures : Leading in the new business world is about sustainable innovation and lifestyles, where business and brands are the new force for positive change
The book ends with a vision of the future business leader, Joachim Cruz, the CEO of BlueSky, an innovative travel business based in Copenhagen. He embraces the new agendas, the new technologies, the new capital markets. But he also has time to smile, to pick up his kids from school, and sit back and enjoy his home-grown glass of Tempranillo.
- Download: People Planet Profit : The Manifesto
- Download: People Planet Profit : The 7 Transformations
- Download: People Planet Profit : The Business Case
- Download: People Planet Profit : The Executive Development Programme
Covid-19 as the wake-up call
How has the recent pandemic challenged and heightened our thinking about these issues – purpose, sustainability, ESG and CSR, inequality, climate crisis and much more?
At the most fundamental level, Covid-19 has revealed three things:
1. Planet: Human activity is strongly related to climate change. The lockdown has resulted in rare sightings of blue skies from Beijing to Delhi, and worldwide CO2 emissions are predicted to fall by 8% in 2020.
2. People: COVID-19 has been hailed as the “big equalizer,” but the reality is that we aren’t equally resilient as a society. Socio-economic status is strongly related to vulnerabilities of all sorts, with the poor and underprivileged in harm’s way to a disproportionate extent.
3. Profit: We cannot survive for long without economic activity and the creation of financial value. Millions of businesses are failing in the face of the pandemic and as many as 40% of businesses may not reopen after this disaster.
In essence, we need to manage climate-related risks, strengthen our social fabric and inspire economic activity that creates value for humankind if we are to create a world that is sustainable and well-equipped to combat impending crises.
So what will it take to achieve this symbiosis between people, planet and profit – also referred to as the “triple bottom line” – in contrast to the single bottom line of profit alone?
For starters, we must accept a basic truism: in a world of finite resources, maximizing private gain inevitably leads to collective loss – that is, the loss of common goods, a phenomenon known as the tragedy of the commons. For example if, in a bid to boost profits, global multinationals build and run factories but do not pay for the pollution they create, we get global warming. The collective is more important than the individual.
If Covid-19 has taught us anything about how to surmount our socio-environmental challenges, it is that each one of us – as individuals, companies or governments – needs to take ownership of our future. Being a bystander is no longer an option. Yet, if you’re like one of the thousands of executives I have encountered over the years, you likely believe that sustainability – that is, the wellbeing of our planet and its people – is important, but it’s “someone else’s problem”. In companies with a sustainability department, everyone points to that department as being responsible for everything sustainability-related.
Why is it that something as important as sustainability is given short shrift by so many in the corporate sphere? Over the past years, I’ve visited dozens of large, publicly listed companies and spoken with hundreds of employees to try to find out. I’ve been to head offices, mines, stores and factories, travelling from Madagascar to India to Chile’s Atacama Desert.
1. Find more purpose
To take ownership of our post-pandemic future, businesses must start by asking the all-important question of corporate purpose – or “why do we do what we do”? Leaders must articulate how the firm creates value for all stakeholders, not just shareholders, and accept that profit is the consequence of such value creation. This process of defining purpose makes it clear that businesses exist to serve society and not the other way round, and the link to sustainability becomes clear. As Paul Polman, ex-CEO of Unilever, said: “Sustainability is totally driven by purpose. It starts with the overall firm belief that we are here to serve society … and only by doing that well, we can make all our stakeholders, including our shareholders, happy.”
How can leaders discover that “true north” – their company’s purpose? Often, it happens via epiphanies or first-hand experience on the front lines. Francesco Starace, the CEO of Enel, one of the largest energy companies in the world, had his epiphany while working in the Middle East in the mid-1980’s. He realized that an energy company’s job was not to foist new habits on people, but rather to enable them to do what they wanted to do in the first place. Crossing an emotional barrier, as Starace did in the 1980s, and identifying with a company’s purpose in a new and personal way enables leaders to build their own sense of sustainability ownership and address the critical problems of our world. “Sooner or later,” as Starace told me, “you have to face up to the facts about why you do what you do.”
2. Engage all stakeholders
Armed with a sense of purpose and a set of concrete sustainability goals, your company is ready to create motivation and ability among your stakeholders, and to help integrate those sustainability goals into their daily work routines.
Market sustainability to stakeholders as an opportunity to contribute to the future wellbeing of the company and the world. To entice employees and other stakeholders to engage in sustainability, appeal sometimes to the head (this is the smart thing to do), other times to the heart (right thing to do), and often both. Lisa Jackson, vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives at Apple told me: “The easiest and most fun part of sustainability is when you can go to the business – as we have done now several times – and say, ‘It will save you money to reduce the amount of scrap metal that is produced. It will save you money to think about packaging in a different way’.”
Alongside motivation, you also have to create the ability to act sustainably. Increase the capability of your workforce by putting systems, structures and training in place that make it easier to act sustainably. Give your stakeholders the tools, confidence and freedom they need. In a word, make sustainability everybody’s job. “If there’s one exception, everyone thinks they’re the exception,” said Keith Weed, Unilever’s chief marketing officer and head of sustainability at the time.
3. Achieve more together
Form broader industry collaborations to address complex problems. Such collaborations, often with traditional competitors, help create the systemic changes that our planet and its people need – and that businesses need, too. “If everything fails around us, we fail too,” said the chief sustainability officer of Marks & Spencer.
Topics such as deforestation, effluent in waterways, or buying minerals from the Congo can only be addressed by a consortium, in which each party, again, needs to rise above self-interest and think about the wellbeing of the collective. Paul Polman has been quick to point out: “We don’t have the right level of cooperation at the global governance level to deal with these issues, and I hope that the business community will step up and fill that void.”
Watching the pandemic unfold before us and seeing both the healing effects of our slowed economic activity on the skies and our planet as well as the horrific plight of our fellow human beings, leaves most of us “uncomfortably numb” and yearning to do something about securing the future. Issues such as global warming, inequality and poverty – as outlined in the SDGs – are gaining urgency. Taking ownership of addressing such issues should form the new leadership mandate.
More from Peter Fisk
- Article: Adidas to Allbirds – sustainable fashion brands embracing the circular economy
- Article: Upcycling. Reinventing fashion to be more sustainable, interesting and unique
- Article: P&G’s Ambition 2030, sustainable innovation as “a force for a good and a force for growth”
- Case study: Agua Bendita. Handmade swimwear from the colourful scraps of Colombia
- Case study: All Birds. The world’s most comfortable shoes
- Case study: Bolt Threads. Synthetic spider silk for a better luxury world
- Case study: Positive Luxury. The butterfly mark you can trust
More from outside
- Report: New Green Radicals: Alstom to Toast Ale, Loop to Lush, TerraCycle to Triodos
- Survey: The World’s Most Sustainable Companies 2020: Denmark’s Orsted tops the list
We live in the most incredible time. More change in the next 10 years than the last 250 years. Technologies with the power to help us leap forwards in unimaginable ways. To transform business, to drive radical innovation. to accelerate growth and achieve progress in the broader world too.
Artificial intelligence and robotics will come together with new mindsets and business models to disrupt everything from entertainment to education, healthcare and travel. For businesses, large and small, it creates a new playing field, with many new possibilities. For people, young and old, it brings new challenges and opportunities. For leaders, it demands new perspectives, new values, and radical new thinking.
“Leading Change” is about having the courage to achieve more. It is about stepping up to see further ahead, to explore more radical ideas, to discover new talents, to seize bigger opportunities, to have more influence, and to positively amplify your impact.
It’s about daring to be more.
Going beyond the ordinary to achieve extra ordinary results. It requires new thinking, and new approaches. It demands change. It probably requires that you are the change. Leading yourself and your business to a new place, to win in today and tomorrow’s world.
“Leading Change” is about rising up to lead the future of your business … There are 7 elevations, 7 ways for leaders to raise their game, that we will explore:
- Winning… to rise above the pursuit of progress through incrementalism, to develop a future mindset, a forwards orientation, redefining success and how to achieve it.
- Sensing… to rise above the chaos of change to see the drivers of tomorrow, making sense of complexity and uncertainty, finding the best new opportunities.
- Framing… to rise above the limitations of business as a profit machine, to capture a higher purpose, guided by the desire, strategies and choices, to make life better.
- Creating … to rise above the obsession for technologies, whilst harnessing their intelligence and capabilities, to innovate more radically for people and society.
- Delivering … to rise above the limitations of big and small, incumbent or start-up, transforming organisations, fusing brands and networks with speed and agility.
- Teaming … to rise above what we each contribute separately, to harness the power of diversity and collaboration, people and platforms, achieving more together.
- Leading … to rise up to be the leader of the future business, with courage to embrace change and progress, inspire and enable others, finding your own magic.
Consider some of the challenges of our changing world:
- In the last 25 years, China’s share of global manufacturing output has grown from 2% to 25%. Over that time China’s GDP has grown thirty-fold.
- In the last two decades, 9.6% of the earth’s total wilderness areas has been lost, equalling an estimated 3.3 million square km.
- 51% of job activities can be automated, only 5% of jobs entirely replaceable by machines. However more new occupations will emerge than those lost.
- New digital technologies can enable a 20% reduction in global carbon emissions by 2030, equivalent to eliminating more than China and India’s CO2
- Car sharing could reduce the number of cars needed by 90% by 2035, resulting in only 17% as many cars as there are today.
- CEO pay has risen 1,000% over the last 40 years, howeveraverage worker pay has increased by just 11%, essentially stagnating taking into account inflation
- 72% of people feel that companies have become more dishonest. 93% of CEOs believe it’s important to engender trust that their company “will do the right thing”.
How will you rise up to do better?
Idea 1. More change in the next 10 years than the last 250 years.
How will you shape the future of your business? From the steam engine to the telephone, automobiles and aeroplanes, space travel and digital revolution, the world has moved forwards rapidly since the industrial revolution. Today’s revolution, driven by aspects such of robotics and AI, will be just as dramatic, but much faster. The next decade’s accelerating change, proliferation of technologies, rapid speed of adaption, and the exponential impacts that result, will dwarf the scale of previous progress. How will we rethink and reinvent our worlds?
Idea 2. Infinite potential, significant choices
How will you seize the opportunities of incredible change? Markets rise and fall, collide and evolve. Power shifts economically and politically, culturally and collectively. Young, intriguing start-ups grab the attention, whilst the older incumbent companies struggle to respond and adapt. Technology, most significantly, disrupts the rules of play, and the possibilities by which we can win. The challenge and opportunities are immense, but where to focus is not obvious. You have more choices than ever before, in terms of who, where, what and how. Global or local? China or India? Online or physical? Human or machines? Make or partner? The choices of course, are not binary or separate, but a huge spectrum of options. How will you make the smarter choices, the right choices for your future?
Idea 3. The paradox of “forwards versus backwards”
Are you doing what you’ve always done? Everybody struggles with this tension, spending too much time looking backwards, and not enough looking forwards. We pour over last year’s performance, learning from previous customers, talking about what we currently know, and rewarded for our past successes. We believe in the formula that got us to where we are, commercially and personally, afraid to let go of it. Yet the past is no longer a guide to the future. The future isn’t like it used to be, a continuation of today. It’s volatile, complex and ambiguous. Too many companies spend most of their time playing the old game, optimising their existing models, and trying to stretch the model which made them successful in the past. Are you looking forwards or backwards?
Idea 4. Pivot to the future
Start with a future mindset. New strategies, acquiring a few start-ups, and driving a program of innovation are not enough. They are typically framed in the context of the old world, the existing business, and an outdated mindset. Top-down business planning, stage-gate product development, and functional operations just don’t work in this new volatile and vibrant context. The old business thrived on stability and predictability, efficiency and repetition. What matters most is the mindset, the attitude to want to change, to be open to new ideas, to have a passion for the future, and to shape it in your own vision. A “growth mindset” is about exploring what’s next, whilst a “fixed mindset” seeks perfection, to optimise the status quo. Best of all, is a “future mindset” which embraces experimentation and growth, to see and shape the future to your advantage.
Idea 5. Build your future-proof business
Start-ups have all the advantages, don’t they? Corporate executives sit in their offices looking out with envy at the speed and agility of small companies, with their ability to start afresh with legacy infrastructures, to grab the new investment and focus on stretching and single-minded dreams, to inspire customers with their funky newness and new business models, and to easily for partnerships. Whilst “speedboats” have many advantages, the “supertankers” have their own strengths. Their challenge is to reimagine how they use their assets in new and powerful ways. Established audiences and diverse portfolios, established supply and distribution networks, experienced people and trusted reputations. The question is how to reimagine the business, to harness what exists and embrace the new. Start-ups and corporates both have advantages, it’s how they use them that matters. The future-proofed business combines the best of both speedboats and supertankers. Size is not the important thing. Transformation is not a one-off. Innovation and transformation are relentless in today’s world. Knowing what you will do next, and next, and next, matters. The future-proof organisation has a built-in appetite to keep reinventing itself.
Idea 6. Harness the power of ideas and networks
What makes a business successful? It’s certainly not about being the biggest company. Anybody can make lots of products, and sell them, usually at a discount. Equally, any company can have a great market share, if they just redefine the boundaries, or don’t care about profitability. So how did WhatsApp create $19 billion in 3 years with 17 people? Or Uber $66 billion in 6 years? Or Alibaba $470 billion in 13 years? They harnessed the power of addictive ideas – concepts, brands and experiences that spread rapidly across their target audiences. They harness the power of networks, in the form of platforms and ecosystems, affiliates and licensees, social media and online communities. The impact is exponential, in that it rapidly multiplies in reach and richness.
Idea 7. Be the radical optimist
Be curious and optimistic. Believe in a better world. What will it take to create the future of your business? If you don’t somebody will need to. Will your legacy be that you managed to postpone the demise of a sinking ship for a little longer, trying to survive in unchartered waters? Or will you be the navigator of incredible new voyages, with a fit for purpose boat, seizing the opportunities of new lands? Innovation today is less about products and services, more about markets and businesses. Transformation is probably a better word, because it demands holistic change. It also becomes relentless, not a short intervention, to get you to a new steady state, but a dynamic business for dynamic markets. Most of all, it starts with, and depends upon, you. Your mindset. Your transformation. Your leadership.
Idea 8. New technologies enhance our human and business potential
Is AI your rocket fuel to the future?Digital platforms like Alibaba and Airbnb bring millions of buyers and sellers together, big data analytics enable precision and predictive experiences like Netflix, 3D printing deletes factories and distributors from value chains, blockchain localises connections and decisions, robotics augments your capabilities, and perhaps most powerfully, AI can reinvent the very essence of what you do. Collectively they accelerate and converge, disrupt and transform every business function, across ever industry. Industry 4.0 is a revolution that challenges the existence of millions of businesses and jobs, Amazon can seem like the enemy of most retailers, Snapchat can feel like the insane distraction of our kids. Yet these technologies also create the possibilities to learn and live in new ways, for even the most traditional business, a local craftsman or a remote trader, to do more, better and cheaper, and go further and faster.
Idea 9. This is the Asian century. Time to follow the new Silk Road
Will you be the Marco Polo of China’s new Belt and Road? 5 billion people, two thirds of the world’s megacities, one third of the global economy, two-thirds of global economic growth, thirty of the Fortune 100, six of the ten largest banks, eight of the ten largest armies, five nuclear powers, massive technological innovation, the newest crop of top-ranked universities. Asia is also the world’s most ethnically, linguistically and culturally diverse region of the planet, eluding any remotely meaningful generalization beyond the geographic label itself. Even for Asians, Asia is dizzying to navigate.
Idea 10. Customers have new agendas, markets have new structures
What are the new drivers of value? Markets have super-segmented, driven by their individual needs, expectations and the ability of technology to engage each person uniquely. As trust in brands declines, they demand more value and greater transparency, and they turn to friends and peers for recommendation. They work on their terms not yours, requiring you to connect with their worlds – fusing public and private, digital and physical, personal and professional – changing contexts for purchase and the nature of value. Collectively as communities and society, their priorities have changed, beyond fairness and environment, demanding more, and rewarding those who deliver.
Idea 11. The paradox of “order versus chaos”
How do you make sense of all this complexity?Our inclination is to seek clarity, to put this new world into boxes, that make choices and targeting easy. But the world no longer lives in a convenient order, and any attempt to order it would miss the dynamic richness, and the new marketspaces. Day fuses with night, home with work, education with entertainment, rich with poor, male with female. There are no straight lines, instead we have brilliant ambiguities. The apparent chaos is the new order. Take customer insight for example, where the old method of seeking average insights about what we already know, is replaced by anthropological discovery, or “design thinking” to explore people in their changing lives. Sometimes it is about reducing chaos and complexity, to find focus and simplicity. Yet newness is often found in the complexity, outside of the old boxes.
Idea 12. Making sense of complexity demands a new worldview
What is your better worldview? When I asked Jim Snabe, chairman of Siemens and Maersk, how he makes sense of his business world, he paused. His first reaction was the obvious, to understand his specific industries, his customer and competitors, today. But then he reflected on the inadequacy of that current view. If what comes next will be different, then he needs to look differently for it, he said. Seeing the bigger picture, is one way to change our viewpoint, but it’s probably still not enough. We still put ourselves at the centre, and then explore the obvious adjacencies. Instead it’s about looking ahead, seeing the emerging patterns of change, the parallels and possibilities, how to react to them, to seize the best new opportunities first. Put simply it’s about being farsighted.
Idea 13. Start from the future, then work backwards
How do you find the best new opportunities?You start from the end point, and then work backwards. As a scientist I have always valued the power of hypothesis. As Einstein wandered through the Swiss mountains, he hypothesised a connection between energy and matter. It was then through experimentation that he proved the association and simplified it to a mathematical formula. Similarly, in dynamic markets, we should start with a hypothesis. This is a creative process. It is about asking profound questions, exploring alternative futures, looking beyond the boundaries of today. Ideas come from everywhere, from other industries or geographies, and from the margins where deviant behaviours and newness emerge. Developing a vision of what the future market will be like enables us to work backwards, and look at how it could evolve, and how we could be most influential in that, turning it to our advantage. This is more intuitive than analytical, requiring leaders to engage deeply in seeing and choosing the future they want.
Idea 14. Sensemaking becomes your competitive advantage.
The best surfers live for the biggest waves. Similarly, the best leaders thrive on radical change. Change that starts in the market and is positively embraced by the business. In the same way the surfers are constantly searching for that next big wave, scanning the global coastlines, travelling hours to get there, so business leaders should be watching the future. “Sensemaking” if you like, becomes the way to outthink, and ultimately outperform, the others in your current or future market, the way to attract customers who have a hunger for newness, and the way to make the right choices when complexity can seem overwhelming. It requires a holistic mind, one that can interpret likely cause and effect, that can use hypothesis and analogy. It requires a leadership team who have diversity of vision yet engage in a collective view of the future. There is no right or wrong, only possibility and choice. Perhaps most usefully, it requires a leader who can ask the right questions.
Do you have the belief of Eliud Kipchoge, to harness technologies like that of AlphaGo, that can transform businesses like Satya Nadella, with the beauty of Zhang Xin, letting go of the past like Mary Barra, creating the legacy of Jack Ma, and realising dreams like JK Rowling? And do it your way?
We live in the most incredible time. More change in the next 10 years than the last 250 years. Technologies with the power to help us leap forwards in unimaginable ways. To transform business, to drive radical innovation. to accelerate growth and achieve progress in the broader world too.
Artificial intelligence and robotics will come together with new mindsets and business models to disrupt everything from entertainment to education, healthcare and travel. For businesses, large and small, it creates a new playing field, with many new possibilities. For people, young and old, it brings new challenges and opportunities. For leaders, it demands new perspectives, new values, and radical new thinking.
“Leading Change” is about having the courage to achieve more. It is about stepping up to see further ahead, to explore more radical ideas, to discover new talents, to seize bigger opportunities, to have more influence, and to positively amplify your impact.
It’s about daring to be more.
Going beyond the ordinary to achieve extra ordinary results. It requires new thinking, and new approaches. It demands change. It probably requires that you are the change. Leading yourself and your business to a new place, to win in today and tomorrow’s world.
“Leading Change” is about rising up to lead the future of your business … There are 7 elevations, 7 ways for leaders to raise their game, that we will explore:
- Winning… to rise above the pursuit of progress through incrementalism, to develop a future mindset, a forwards orientation, redefining success and how to achieve it.
- Sensing… to rise above the chaos of change to see the drivers of tomorrow, making sense of complexity and uncertainty, finding the best new opportunities.
- Framing… to rise above the limitations of business as a profit machine, to capture a higher purpose, guided by the desire, strategies and choices, to make life better.
- Creating … to rise above the obsession for technologies, whilst harnessing their intelligence and capabilities, to innovate more radically for people and society.
- Delivering … to rise above the limitations of big and small, incumbent or start-up, transforming organisations, fusing brands and networks with speed and agility.
- Teaming … to rise above what we each contribute separately, to harness the power of diversity and collaboration, people and platforms, achieving more together.
- Leading … to rise up to be the leader of the future business, with courage to embrace change and progress, inspire and enable others, finding your own magic.
Consider some of the challenges of our changing world:
- In the last 25 years, China’s share of global manufacturing output has grown from 2% to 25%. Over that time China’s GDP has grown thirty-fold.
- In the last two decades, 9.6% of the earth’s total wilderness areas has been lost, equalling an estimated 3.3 million square km.
- 51% of job activities can be automated, only 5% of jobs entirely replaceable by machines. However more new occupations will emerge than those lost.
- New digital technologies can enable a 20% reduction in global carbon emissions by 2030, equivalent to eliminating more than China and India’s CO2
- Car sharing could reduce the number of cars needed by 90% by 2035, resulting in only 17% as many cars as there are today.
- CEO pay has risen 1,000% over the last 40 years, howeveraverage worker pay has increased by just 11%, essentially stagnating taking into account inflation
- 72% of people feel that companies have become more dishonest. 93% of CEOs believe it’s important to engender trust that their company “will do the right thing”.
How will you rise up to do better?
Idea 1. More change in the next 10 years than the last 250 years.
How will you shape the future of your business? From the steam engine to the telephone, automobiles and aeroplanes, space travel and digital revolution, the world has moved forwards rapidly since the industrial revolution. Today’s revolution, driven by aspects such of robotics and AI, will be just as dramatic, but much faster. The next decade’s accelerating change, proliferation of technologies, rapid speed of adaption, and the exponential impacts that result, will dwarf the scale of previous progress. How will we rethink and reinvent our worlds?
Idea 2. Infinite potential, significant choices
How will you seize the opportunities of incredible change? Markets rise and fall, collide and evolve. Power shifts economically and politically, culturally and collectively. Young, intriguing start-ups grab the attention, whilst the older incumbent companies struggle to respond and adapt. Technology, most significantly, disrupts the rules of play, and the possibilities by which we can win. The challenge and opportunities are immense, but where to focus is not obvious. You have more choices than ever before, in terms of who, where, what and how. Global or local? China or India? Online or physical? Human or machines? Make or partner? The choices of course, are not binary or separate, but a huge spectrum of options. How will you make the smarter choices, the right choices for your future?
Idea 3. The paradox of “forwards versus backwards”
Are you doing what you’ve always done? Everybody struggles with this tension, spending too much time looking backwards, and not enough looking forwards. We pour over last year’s performance, learning from previous customers, talking about what we currently know, and rewarded for our past successes. We believe in the formula that got us to where we are, commercially and personally, afraid to let go of it. Yet the past is no longer a guide to the future. The future isn’t like it used to be, a continuation of today. It’s volatile, complex and ambiguous. Too many companies spend most of their time playing the old game, optimising their existing models, and trying to stretch the model which made them successful in the past. Are you looking forwards or backwards?
Idea 4. Pivot to the future
Start with a future mindset. New strategies, acquiring a few start-ups, and driving a program of innovation are not enough. They are typically framed in the context of the old world, the existing business, and an outdated mindset. Top-down business planning, stage-gate product development, and functional operations just don’t work in this new volatile and vibrant context. The old business thrived on stability and predictability, efficiency and repetition. What matters most is the mindset, the attitude to want to change, to be open to new ideas, to have a passion for the future, and to shape it in your own vision. A “growth mindset” is about exploring what’s next, whilst a “fixed mindset” seeks perfection, to optimise the status quo. Best of all, is a “future mindset” which embraces experimentation and growth, to see and shape the future to your advantage.
Idea 5. Build your future-proof business
Start-ups have all the advantages, don’t they? Corporate executives sit in their offices looking out with envy at the speed and agility of small companies, with their ability to start afresh with legacy infrastructures, to grab the new investment and focus on stretching and single-minded dreams, to inspire customers with their funky newness and new business models, and to easily for partnerships. Whilst “speedboats” have many advantages, the “supertankers” have their own strengths. Their challenge is to reimagine how they use their assets in new and powerful ways. Established audiences and diverse portfolios, established supply and distribution networks, experienced people and trusted reputations. The question is how to reimagine the business, to harness what exists and embrace the new. Start-ups and corporates both have advantages, it’s how they use them that matters. The future-proofed business combines the best of both speedboats and supertankers. Size is not the important thing. Transformation is not a one-off. Innovation and transformation are relentless in today’s world. Knowing what you will do next, and next, and next, matters. The future-proof organisation has a built-in appetite to keep reinventing itself.
Idea 6. Harness the power of ideas and networks
What makes a business successful? It’s certainly not about being the biggest company. Anybody can make lots of products, and sell them, usually at a discount. Equally, any company can have a great market share, if they just redefine the boundaries, or don’t care about profitability. So how did WhatsApp create $19 billion in 3 years with 17 people? Or Uber $66 billion in 6 years? Or Alibaba $470 billion in 13 years? They harnessed the power of addictive ideas – concepts, brands and experiences that spread rapidly across their target audiences. They harness the power of networks, in the form of platforms and ecosystems, affiliates and licensees, social media and online communities. The impact is exponential, in that it rapidly multiplies in reach and richness.
Idea 7. Be the radical optimist
Be curious and optimistic. Believe in a better world. What will it take to create the future of your business? If you don’t somebody will need to. Will your legacy be that you managed to postpone the demise of a sinking ship for a little longer, trying to survive in unchartered waters? Or will you be the navigator of incredible new voyages, with a fit for purpose boat, seizing the opportunities of new lands? Innovation today is less about products and services, more about markets and businesses. Transformation is probably a better word, because it demands holistic change. It also becomes relentless, not a short intervention, to get you to a new steady state, but a dynamic business for dynamic markets. Most of all, it starts with, and depends upon, you. Your mindset. Your transformation. Your leadership.
Idea 8. New technologies enhance our human and business potential
Is AI your rocket fuel to the future?Digital platforms like Alibaba and Airbnb bring millions of buyers and sellers together, big data analytics enable precision and predictive experiences like Netflix, 3D printing deletes factories and distributors from value chains, blockchain localises connections and decisions, robotics augments your capabilities, and perhaps most powerfully, AI can reinvent the very essence of what you do. Collectively they accelerate and converge, disrupt and transform every business function, across ever industry. Industry 4.0 is a revolution that challenges the existence of millions of businesses and jobs, Amazon can seem like the enemy of most retailers, Snapchat can feel like the insane distraction of our kids. Yet these technologies also create the possibilities to learn and live in new ways, for even the most traditional business, a local craftsman or a remote trader, to do more, better and cheaper, and go further and faster.
Idea 9. This is the Asian century. Time to follow the new Silk Road
Will you be the Marco Polo of China’s new Belt and Road? 5 billion people, two thirds of the world’s megacities, one third of the global economy, two-thirds of global economic growth, thirty of the Fortune 100, six of the ten largest banks, eight of the ten largest armies, five nuclear powers, massive technological innovation, the newest crop of top-ranked universities. Asia is also the world’s most ethnically, linguistically and culturally diverse region of the planet, eluding any remotely meaningful generalization beyond the geographic label itself. Even for Asians, Asia is dizzying to navigate.
Idea 10. Customers have new agendas, markets have new structures
What are the new drivers of value? Markets have super-segmented, driven by their individual needs, expectations and the ability of technology to engage each person uniquely. As trust in brands declines, they demand more value and greater transparency, and they turn to friends and peers for recommendation. They work on their terms not yours, requiring you to connect with their worlds – fusing public and private, digital and physical, personal and professional – changing contexts for purchase and the nature of value. Collectively as communities and society, their priorities have changed, beyond fairness and environment, demanding more, and rewarding those who deliver.
Idea 11. The paradox of “order versus chaos”
How do you make sense of all this complexity?Our inclination is to seek clarity, to put this new world into boxes, that make choices and targeting easy. But the world no longer lives in a convenient order, and any attempt to order it would miss the dynamic richness, and the new marketspaces. Day fuses with night, home with work, education with entertainment, rich with poor, male with female. There are no straight lines, instead we have brilliant ambiguities. The apparent chaos is the new order. Take customer insight for example, where the old method of seeking average insights about what we already know, is replaced by anthropological discovery, or “design thinking” to explore people in their changing lives. Sometimes it is about reducing chaos and complexity, to find focus and simplicity. Yet newness is often found in the complexity, outside of the old boxes.
Idea 12. Making sense of complexity demands a new worldview
What is your better worldview? When I asked Jim Snabe, chairman of Siemens and Maersk, how he makes sense of his business world, he paused. His first reaction was the obvious, to understand his specific industries, his customer and competitors, today. But then he reflected on the inadequacy of that current view. If what comes next will be different, then he needs to look differently for it, he said. Seeing the bigger picture, is one way to change our viewpoint, but it’s probably still not enough. We still put ourselves at the centre, and then explore the obvious adjacencies. Instead it’s about looking ahead, seeing the emerging patterns of change, the parallels and possibilities, how to react to them, to seize the best new opportunities first. Put simply it’s about being farsighted.
Idea 13. Start from the future, then work backwards
How do you find the best new opportunities?You start from the end point, and then work backwards. As a scientist I have always valued the power of hypothesis. As Einstein wandered through the Swiss mountains, he hypothesised a connection between energy and matter. It was then through experimentation that he proved the association and simplified it to a mathematical formula. Similarly, in dynamic markets, we should start with a hypothesis. This is a creative process. It is about asking profound questions, exploring alternative futures, looking beyond the boundaries of today. Ideas come from everywhere, from other industries or geographies, and from the margins where deviant behaviours and newness emerge. Developing a vision of what the future market will be like enables us to work backwards, and look at how it could evolve, and how we could be most influential in that, turning it to our advantage. This is more intuitive than analytical, requiring leaders to engage deeply in seeing and choosing the future they want.
Idea 14. Sensemaking becomes your competitive advantage.
The best surfers live for the biggest waves. Similarly, the best leaders thrive on radical change. Change that starts in the market and is positively embraced by the business. In the same way the surfers are constantly searching for that next big wave, scanning the global coastlines, travelling hours to get there, so business leaders should be watching the future. “Sensemaking” if you like, becomes the way to outthink, and ultimately outperform, the others in your current or future market, the way to attract customers who have a hunger for newness, and the way to make the right choices when complexity can seem overwhelming. It requires a holistic mind, one that can interpret likely cause and effect, that can use hypothesis and analogy. It requires a leadership team who have diversity of vision yet engage in a collective view of the future. There is no right or wrong, only possibility and choice. Perhaps most usefully, it requires a leader who can ask the right questions.
Do you have the belief of Eliud Kipchoge, to harness technologies like that of AlphaGo, that can transform businesses like Satya Nadella, with the beauty of Zhang Xin, letting go of the past like Mary Barra, creating the legacy of Jack Ma, and realising dreams like JK Rowling? And do it your way?
- Download Peter Fisk’s Helsinki keynote here (limited time only): The Quantum Store
Change is dramatic, pervasive and relentless. The challenges are numerous. The opportunities are greater.
Incredible technologies and geopolitical shifts, complex markets and stagnating growth, demanding customers and disruptive entrepreneurs, environmental crisis and social distrust, unexpected shocks and uncertain futures. The old codes that got us here don’t work anymore. Moving forwards needs a new mindset.
The future isn’t like it used to be
- Market are fast and dynamic, more change in next 10 years than last 250
- Leading in complex and uncertain markets, every business is a digital business
- Covid-19 accelerated change, from Felix to Lifvs, Meituan and Starship
- Tobi Lutke had a dream for Shopify, to engage people in what they love
- How Instagram and Fortnite, Glossier and Nike are redefining retail
The quantum store, e-commerce and more
- Shopping is consumer-driven, tech-enabled, but human and emotional
- Defining the “quantum” store, and how Nike transformed its retail experience
- E-commerce and more … personal, fast, easy, dynamic, virtual … and the 3Ss
- Smart … Stitch Fix’s data … Jio’s superapps … Coupang’s speedy delivery
- Sociable … Pinduoduo’s games … Zalando’s brands … Glossier’s community
- Sustainable … Bookshop’s locality … Ecovative’s packaging … Depop’s cool
How can you shape a better future?
- Now is the time to dare, to accelerate your future – more foresight and vision
- Start with a bigger purpose, think from the future back, faster and easier
- Work from the outside in, reframing context, language and experiences
- Don’t look for what’s next, but what happens after what happens next
- Lead with curiosity, creativity and courage – bold, brave and brilliant!
This is a session for business leaders who seek to progress in today’s rapidly changing world, and to create the organisations that will thrive in tomorrow’s world.
It explores how to lead a better future, to reimagine your business, to reinvent markets, to energise your people. It describes how to combine profit with more purpose, intelligent technologies with creative people, radical innovation with sustainable impact.
It dives deep into the minds of some of today’s most inspiring business leaders – people like Anne Wojcicki and Jeff Bezos, Emily Weiss and Devi Shetty, Daniel Ek and Tan Le, Mary Barra and Masayoshi Son, Satya Nadella and Zhang Ruimin – and practical retail examples.
- Explore the FutureStore … case studies on the future of retail
Do you have the courage to create a better future, for you and your business?
Q&A with Peter Fisk
You’re the keynote speaker at an event that aims to inspire the main influencers / opinion leaders on e-commerce, along with online vendors. What can the audience expect from your keynote? Will you concentrate on exploring the themes from your latest book?
Now is the time to dare. Now is the time for leaders to have courage to reimagine their businesses. Now is the time to create the future of retail. Which is not just about digital technologies. Or social media. Or super speedy delivery. But fundamentally harnessing the power of the present to create a better future.
18 months of global health crisis has created a huge opportunity. Every market is being shaken up. In financial services, Visa and Paypal are more valuable than any bank. In automotive, Tesla outperforms Toyota despite selling 10 times less cars. In energy, carbon giants are displaced by Orsted and Schneider. Even in food and drink, Kweichow Moutai is twice as valuable as Coca Cola, or Unilever, or Diageo.
Of course, the pandemic has also been a difficult time, but like “wei-je” (the Chinese word for crisis) when translated means both danger and opportunity. 57% of Fortune 500 companies were created in a downturn, 90% of patents are filed in or just after a downturn. And many retailers describe how 10 years of transformation happened, in just a few months of lockdown.
My new book “Business Recoded” argues that the old codes of business don’t work. The maelstrom of change, driven by disruptive technologies, by economic power shifts, by new agendas like sustainability, and by consumer attitude change, have all been accelerated by Covid-19. We now need to reimagine, reinvent, recode our businesses for a better future.
If so, how would you say that the courage to create a successful and innovative company in the future applies specifically to e-commerce? What does “a better future” mean in this context? What previous research experience or insight do you have about e-commerce? How has the market changed along the years and where is it heading?
Firstly, we are at the point now where every company is a digital business, and similarly within retail, every retailer is an e-commerce business.
We can talk about all the new tools and tactics in e-commerce – from video streaming influencers to augmented reality, hybrid channels and subscription models, rapid research and streamlining returns, site loading speeds to new payment options, brand showcases and consumer personalisation, speedy delivery and sustainability.
But what’s important is to stop thinking of it in a separate way from physical formats. By that I don’t just mean omnichannel, but moving to a point where we create a truly “liquid” experience for customers, which embraces the best of physical and digital opportunities.
My expectation today as a consumer is that every retailer, however small or niche, will have a website. And from that website I can engage, ideally transactionally. But it’s more than that How can my mobile phone help me navigate the physical store? How can it become more personal by individual offers and advice? How can I buy online and collect or take back to store? Or buy instore, and get delivered to my home? None of this is rocket science, but is harder if we think in silos.
Look at the way in which Nike has transformed its distribution model over the last 24 months. The sportswear company has massively invested in its mobile platform – not just for incredible efficient and simple purchasing, but with a wide range of content to enjoy sport and engage audiences. VIP clubs, limited editions, celebrity events, dynamic pricing and relevant offers. But also its physical branded stores, which is equally a digitally-enabled, immersive-brand experience. Nike really is a direct-to-consumer brand today, and a great example of liquid retail.
I’m a big fan of Tobi Lutke, the German entrepreneur who followed his love of skiing to Canada. There, he created his own online snowboarding shop, but focused on what his consumers loved – the stories of snowboarding, not simply the products. This richer content engaged people more deeply, his brand became a community, and his physical store, a cult hangout for snow lovers.
Other retailers loved his online store so much that they wanted to create a similar brand experience. And so Tobi create Shopify, which is a cloud-based, subscription-based “e-commerce in a box” which provides everything from inventory and distribution, to payments and promotional tools. The smallest store in Finland can become a global business.
How has the global pandemic and these exceptional times influenced your thinking regarding your main topics of interest and research? And what does the disruption mean to e-commerce?
The pandemic has massively accelerated the application of digital technologies, for online transactions, and much more broadly in terms of brand building, supply chains, product and sales personalisation, inventory management, channel partners, local relevance, pricing models, and customer experience.
It’s also changing customer attitudes and behaviours forever. Banking, communication, entertainment, healthcare have all become digital-centric experience. But so has retail, and particularly in areas such as transport, hospitality, music, books, fashion and groceries. That’s not news.
But what is interesting, are the consequences. Social media platforms like Instagram and Pinterest are now significant retailers – click on a photo shared by a friend, and you can buy the same item instantly. Gaming platforms, like Fortnite, have become the new spaces to engage young people in new ideas, product launches and brands – Travis Scott just launched his latest album, and “tour” on the gaming platform.
In Singapore, DBS, the leading bank pioneered a strategy to “make banking invisible” and to embed its financial services within every other industry that matters to customers – not just for payments, but to manage money better. At the same time, Grab, which is a taxi and grocery delivery business, introduced Grab Pay, which has become a leading financial business.
In India, Jio was a phone company launched by the country’s richest entrepreneur – Mukesh Ambani, whose main business was in petrochemicals. He launched the phone with free calls and text, and became market leader with 3 months. He also became the leading advertising platform, the ad revenues subsidising the free calls. He then started using the phone to build Jio apps for different services – food delivery, taxi hailing, entertainment, grocery retail, healthcare and financial services.
Jio, Grab – and similarly others around the world like Line, GoJek, Rappi and WeChat – are super apps, which ignore the old boundaries of business sectors. Instead they focus on the customer, and see the world through their eyes. Indeed, by extension, every type of business can be a retailer today – banks and phone companies, manufacturers and game companies.
The event will include announcing and discussing the results of a major e-commerce survey and awarding the year’s best e-commerce sites. What would you say that makes the best online vendors stand out from the competition? Any personal favourites to share?
Now is the time for every business – and particularly every retailer – to reimagine their future. What matters, is to not be limited by where you come from – whether you are big or small, physical or digital – but by the vision which you have. And that vision should not just be to “sell lots of stuff”, but to make the world better in some way – to help people to do what they seek to do better, be that run faster or build a better home, care for the environment, and more equality in society.
Don’t be limited by technology thinking, don’t be intimidated by its language and complexity. Focus on the future, and how you can create a better future for customers. Start from the future back, and the outside in. Think in a liquid way, about the human experience you want to create and how that can be enhanced physically and digitally.
Who are my favourites?
Around the world, I love the rise of these new generation businesses – like StockX where consumers bid for purchases in an auction, most often focused on limited edition sneakers. There are so many great examples, which I will talk about. Like Pinduoduo, one of the fastest growing retailers in the world right now, which transformed itself from an online retailer to be a social-gamified-shopping experience. Imagine walking along a mall with friends, sharing things which catch your eye, playing games to win discounts, live-streaming your experience to friends.
Or Stitch Fix, developed by Katrina Lake, which sells fashion by monthly subscription, sending you a box of clothes each month, and using data analytics to rapidly learn which clothes you will like best. Or Bookshop, developed by Andy Hunter from Canada, with a business model supporting small independent physical bookstores, providing an collaborative online local-to-global sales platform, and an antidote to the power of Amazon!
In Europe, I’m a big fan of Rapha, which started in the UK, as a brand of premium cycle wear, rapidly opening stores across the world called Cycle Clubs, with coffee shops, showers and bike stores. Or Germany’s Zalando which has gone beyond simple transactions to build better product brand experiences within its platform, and to engage with people on the big sustainability issues in areas such as fast fashion, packaging, and deliveries.
All in all, what should be the main takeaway from your keynote?
We live in an incredible time of opportunity – more change in the next 10 years than the last 250 years – harnessing the power of technology to transform markets and business models, embracing sustainability to innovate everything from logistics to packaging, using the power of data to personalise in mass markets, and much more.
Now is the time to dare, for business leaders to have the courage and creativity to reimagine the future of their retail businesses, and to use this moment – as we emerge from the pandemic – to accelerate a better business future.
We live in the most incredible time. More change in the next 10 years than the last 250 years. Technologies with the power to help us leap forwards in unimaginable ways. To transform business, to drive radical innovation. to accelerate growth and achieve progress in the broader world too.
Artificial intelligence and robotics will come together with new mindsets and business models to disrupt everything from entertainment to education, healthcare and travel. For businesses, large and small, it creates a new playing field, with many new possibilities. For people, young and old, it brings new challenges and opportunities. For leaders, it demands new perspectives, new values, and radical new thinking.
“Leading Change” is about having the courage to achieve more. It is about stepping up to see further ahead, to explore more radical ideas, to discover new talents, to seize bigger opportunities, to have more influence, and to positively amplify your impact.
It’s about daring to be more.
Going beyond the ordinary to achieve extra ordinary results. It requires new thinking, and new approaches. It demands change. It probably requires that you are the change. Leading yourself and your business to a new place, to win in today and tomorrow’s world.
“Leading Change” is about rising up to lead the future of your business … There are 7 elevations, 7 ways for leaders to raise their game, that we will explore:
- Winning… to rise above the pursuit of progress through incrementalism, to develop a future mindset, a forwards orientation, redefining success and how to achieve it.
- Sensing… to rise above the chaos of change to see the drivers of tomorrow, making sense of complexity and uncertainty, finding the best new opportunities.
- Framing… to rise above the limitations of business as a profit machine, to capture a higher purpose, guided by the desire, strategies and choices, to make life better.
- Creating … to rise above the obsession for technologies, whilst harnessing their intelligence and capabilities, to innovate more radically for people and society.
- Delivering … to rise above the limitations of big and small, incumbent or start-up, transforming organisations, fusing brands and networks with speed and agility.
- Teaming … to rise above what we each contribute separately, to harness the power of diversity and collaboration, people and platforms, achieving more together.
- Leading … to rise up to be the leader of the future business, with courage to embrace change and progress, inspire and enable others, finding your own magic.
Consider some of the challenges of our changing world:
- In the last 25 years, China’s share of global manufacturing output has grown from 2% to 25%. Over that time China’s GDP has grown thirty-fold.
- In the last two decades, 9.6% of the earth’s total wilderness areas has been lost, equalling an estimated 3.3 million square km.
- 51% of job activities can be automated, only 5% of jobs entirely replaceable by machines. However more new occupations will emerge than those lost.
- New digital technologies can enable a 20% reduction in global carbon emissions by 2030, equivalent to eliminating more than China and India’s CO2
- Car sharing could reduce the number of cars needed by 90% by 2035, resulting in only 17% as many cars as there are today.
- CEO pay has risen 1,000% over the last 40 years, howeveraverage worker pay has increased by just 11%, essentially stagnating taking into account inflation
- 72% of people feel that companies have become more dishonest. 93% of CEOs believe it’s important to engender trust that their company “will do the right thing”.
How will you rise up to do better?
Idea 1. More change in the next 10 years than the last 250 years.
How will you shape the future of your business? From the steam engine to the telephone, automobiles and aeroplanes, space travel and digital revolution, the world has moved forwards rapidly since the industrial revolution. Today’s revolution, driven by aspects such of robotics and AI, will be just as dramatic, but much faster. The next decade’s accelerating change, proliferation of technologies, rapid speed of adaption, and the exponential impacts that result, will dwarf the scale of previous progress. How will we rethink and reinvent our worlds?
Idea 2. Infinite potential, significant choices
How will you seize the opportunities of incredible change? Markets rise and fall, collide and evolve. Power shifts economically and politically, culturally and collectively. Young, intriguing start-ups grab the attention, whilst the older incumbent companies struggle to respond and adapt. Technology, most significantly, disrupts the rules of play, and the possibilities by which we can win. The challenge and opportunities are immense, but where to focus is not obvious. You have more choices than ever before, in terms of who, where, what and how. Global or local? China or India? Online or physical? Human or machines? Make or partner? The choices of course, are not binary or separate, but a huge spectrum of options. How will you make the smarter choices, the right choices for your future?
Idea 3. The paradox of “forwards versus backwards”
Are you doing what you’ve always done? Everybody struggles with this tension, spending too much time looking backwards, and not enough looking forwards. We pour over last year’s performance, learning from previous customers, talking about what we currently know, and rewarded for our past successes. We believe in the formula that got us to where we are, commercially and personally, afraid to let go of it. Yet the past is no longer a guide to the future. The future isn’t like it used to be, a continuation of today. It’s volatile, complex and ambiguous. Too many companies spend most of their time playing the old game, optimising their existing models, and trying to stretch the model which made them successful in the past. Are you looking forwards or backwards?
Idea 4. Pivot to the future
Start with a future mindset. New strategies, acquiring a few start-ups, and driving a program of innovation are not enough. They are typically framed in the context of the old world, the existing business, and an outdated mindset. Top-down business planning, stage-gate product development, and functional operations just don’t work in this new volatile and vibrant context. The old business thrived on stability and predictability, efficiency and repetition. What matters most is the mindset, the attitude to want to change, to be open to new ideas, to have a passion for the future, and to shape it in your own vision. A “growth mindset” is about exploring what’s next, whilst a “fixed mindset” seeks perfection, to optimise the status quo. Best of all, is a “future mindset” which embraces experimentation and growth, to see and shape the future to your advantage.
Idea 5. Build your future-proof business
Start-ups have all the advantages, don’t they? Corporate executives sit in their offices looking out with envy at the speed and agility of small companies, with their ability to start afresh with legacy infrastructures, to grab the new investment and focus on stretching and single-minded dreams, to inspire customers with their funky newness and new business models, and to easily for partnerships. Whilst “speedboats” have many advantages, the “supertankers” have their own strengths. Their challenge is to reimagine how they use their assets in new and powerful ways. Established audiences and diverse portfolios, established supply and distribution networks, experienced people and trusted reputations. The question is how to reimagine the business, to harness what exists and embrace the new. Start-ups and corporates both have advantages, it’s how they use them that matters. The future-proofed business combines the best of both speedboats and supertankers. Size is not the important thing. Transformation is not a one-off. Innovation and transformation are relentless in today’s world. Knowing what you will do next, and next, and next, matters. The future-proof organisation has a built-in appetite to keep reinventing itself.
Idea 6. Harness the power of ideas and networks
What makes a business successful? It’s certainly not about being the biggest company. Anybody can make lots of products, and sell them, usually at a discount. Equally, any company can have a great market share, if they just redefine the boundaries, or don’t care about profitability. So how did WhatsApp create $19 billion in 3 years with 17 people? Or Uber $66 billion in 6 years? Or Alibaba $470 billion in 13 years? They harnessed the power of addictive ideas – concepts, brands and experiences that spread rapidly across their target audiences. They harness the power of networks, in the form of platforms and ecosystems, affiliates and licensees, social media and online communities. The impact is exponential, in that it rapidly multiplies in reach and richness.
Idea 7. Be the radical optimist
Be curious and optimistic. Believe in a better world. What will it take to create the future of your business? If you don’t somebody will need to. Will your legacy be that you managed to postpone the demise of a sinking ship for a little longer, trying to survive in unchartered waters? Or will you be the navigator of incredible new voyages, with a fit for purpose boat, seizing the opportunities of new lands? Innovation today is less about products and services, more about markets and businesses. Transformation is probably a better word, because it demands holistic change. It also becomes relentless, not a short intervention, to get you to a new steady state, but a dynamic business for dynamic markets. Most of all, it starts with, and depends upon, you. Your mindset. Your transformation. Your leadership.
Idea 8. New technologies enhance our human and business potential
Is AI your rocket fuel to the future?Digital platforms like Alibaba and Airbnb bring millions of buyers and sellers together, big data analytics enable precision and predictive experiences like Netflix, 3D printing deletes factories and distributors from value chains, blockchain localises connections and decisions, robotics augments your capabilities, and perhaps most powerfully, AI can reinvent the very essence of what you do. Collectively they accelerate and converge, disrupt and transform every business function, across ever industry. Industry 4.0 is a revolution that challenges the existence of millions of businesses and jobs, Amazon can seem like the enemy of most retailers, Snapchat can feel like the insane distraction of our kids. Yet these technologies also create the possibilities to learn and live in new ways, for even the most traditional business, a local craftsman or a remote trader, to do more, better and cheaper, and go further and faster.
Idea 9. This is the Asian century. Time to follow the new Silk Road
Will you be the Marco Polo of China’s new Belt and Road? 5 billion people, two thirds of the world’s megacities, one third of the global economy, two-thirds of global economic growth, thirty of the Fortune 100, six of the ten largest banks, eight of the ten largest armies, five nuclear powers, massive technological innovation, the newest crop of top-ranked universities. Asia is also the world’s most ethnically, linguistically and culturally diverse region of the planet, eluding any remotely meaningful generalization beyond the geographic label itself. Even for Asians, Asia is dizzying to navigate.
Idea 10. Customers have new agendas, markets have new structures
What are the new drivers of value? Markets have super-segmented, driven by their individual needs, expectations and the ability of technology to engage each person uniquely. As trust in brands declines, they demand more value and greater transparency, and they turn to friends and peers for recommendation. They work on their terms not yours, requiring you to connect with their worlds – fusing public and private, digital and physical, personal and professional – changing contexts for purchase and the nature of value. Collectively as communities and society, their priorities have changed, beyond fairness and environment, demanding more, and rewarding those who deliver.
Idea 11. The paradox of “order versus chaos”
How do you make sense of all this complexity?Our inclination is to seek clarity, to put this new world into boxes, that make choices and targeting easy. But the world no longer lives in a convenient order, and any attempt to order it would miss the dynamic richness, and the new marketspaces. Day fuses with night, home with work, education with entertainment, rich with poor, male with female. There are no straight lines, instead we have brilliant ambiguities. The apparent chaos is the new order. Take customer insight for example, where the old method of seeking average insights about what we already know, is replaced by anthropological discovery, or “design thinking” to explore people in their changing lives. Sometimes it is about reducing chaos and complexity, to find focus and simplicity. Yet newness is often found in the complexity, outside of the old boxes.
Idea 12. Making sense of complexity demands a new worldview
What is your better worldview? When I asked Jim Snabe, chairman of Siemens and Maersk, how he makes sense of his business world, he paused. His first reaction was the obvious, to understand his specific industries, his customer and competitors, today. But then he reflected on the inadequacy of that current view. If what comes next will be different, then he needs to look differently for it, he said. Seeing the bigger picture, is one way to change our viewpoint, but it’s probably still not enough. We still put ourselves at the centre, and then explore the obvious adjacencies. Instead it’s about looking ahead, seeing the emerging patterns of change, the parallels and possibilities, how to react to them, to seize the best new opportunities first. Put simply it’s about being farsighted.
Idea 13. Start from the future, then work backwards
How do you find the best new opportunities?You start from the end point, and then work backwards. As a scientist I have always valued the power of hypothesis. As Einstein wandered through the Swiss mountains, he hypothesised a connection between energy and matter. It was then through experimentation that he proved the association and simplified it to a mathematical formula. Similarly, in dynamic markets, we should start with a hypothesis. This is a creative process. It is about asking profound questions, exploring alternative futures, looking beyond the boundaries of today. Ideas come from everywhere, from other industries or geographies, and from the margins where deviant behaviours and newness emerge. Developing a vision of what the future market will be like enables us to work backwards, and look at how it could evolve, and how we could be most influential in that, turning it to our advantage. This is more intuitive than analytical, requiring leaders to engage deeply in seeing and choosing the future they want.
Idea 14. Sensemaking becomes your competitive advantage.
The best surfers live for the biggest waves. Similarly, the best leaders thrive on radical change. Change that starts in the market and is positively embraced by the business. In the same way the surfers are constantly searching for that next big wave, scanning the global coastlines, travelling hours to get there, so business leaders should be watching the future. “Sensemaking” if you like, becomes the way to outthink, and ultimately outperform, the others in your current or future market, the way to attract customers who have a hunger for newness, and the way to make the right choices when complexity can seem overwhelming. It requires a holistic mind, one that can interpret likely cause and effect, that can use hypothesis and analogy. It requires a leadership team who have diversity of vision yet engage in a collective view of the future. There is no right or wrong, only possibility and choice. Perhaps most usefully, it requires a leader who can ask the right questions.
Do you have the belief of Eliud Kipchoge, to harness technologies like that of AlphaGo, that can transform businesses like Satya Nadella, with the beauty of Zhang Xin, letting go of the past like Mary Barra, creating the legacy of Jack Ma, and realising dreams like JK Rowling? And do it your way?
More programs from IE Business School Global AMP’s director Peter Fisk.
Masterclass 1: LEADING CHANGE by Peter Fisk
Download a summary
- Making sense of today’s world, the challenge and opportunity of relentless change
- The future isn’t like it used to be, so we can’t keep doing what we used to do
- 100 companies changing the world right now. What can you learn from them?
- Start with a future mindset, jump ahead, look forwards not backwards
- Going beyond limits, how will you be the change, how will you achieve more?
Masterclass 2: THE FUTURE BUSINESS by Peter Fisk
Download a summary
- How is the 21st Century Business different from the 20th Century Business?
- East and West, Tech and Human, Profit and Purpose, Start-up and Corporate
- Paradoxes provide new opportunities … to reinvent how we work, how we win
- Learning from Asia’s high growth markets, and doing business differently
- Defining the DNA of the future business, and what it takes to be a great leader
Masterclass 3: DARE TO BE MORE by Peter Fisk
Download a summary
- Aurora … Create the future, like Masayoshi Son and Emily Weiss
- Komorebi … Seize the best opportunities, like Anne Wojcicki and Wang Xing
- Transcendence … Find more purpose, like Larry Fink and Yves Chouinard
- Ingenuity … Innovate with humanity, like Devi Shetty and David Kelley
- Syzygy … Transform your business, like Bernard Arnault and Jeff Bezos
- Ubuntu … Achieve more together like Piyush Gupta and Zhang Ruimin
- Awestruck … Be a better leader, like Pablo Isla and Tadashi Yanai
CMOs should make the best CEOs.
Marketers have a deep understanding of markets, how the future is emerging, what the customers of today and tomorrow are demanding, how competitors are evolving, the best new ideas around the world, and therefore what it will take to drive future innovation and growth. Yet only 11% of CEOs come from a marketing-related background, far behind those who were CFOs or COOs. Finance and operations matter, but they don’t move the organisation forwards.
Too many marketers get caught up in the tactics – perfecting the creative execution of advertising, debating the intricacies of price changes, ensuring that their search engine positioning is optimised, a slave to quarterly revenues, or maybe even the sales team. The driver for ever great data analytics, the use of precision marketing tools, the desire for real time engagement, has dragged – or enticed – marketing leaders into this short-term. Yes, it matters, but it’s not everything.
Marketers should be stepping up to drive strategy, innovation, and change across the organisation. If not them, then who?
One of the most profound moments of my own marketing career was when working with Coca Cola, their CMO had a last-minute idea to rebrand his global marketing plan as the global growth plan. Suddenly everyone in the executive team wanted to see it, read it, be part of it. Suddenly it became a conversation not about reducing the marketing budget, but how to find more budget to fund additional growth. Marketers are the growth drivers, and actually create over 3x more economic value than any other function in the business (based on a research project I did with Philip Kotler’s input and a team of economists). And marketers have some indispensable tools – brands, customers, innovation – to achieve this growth.
The problem is that too many marketers live in an echo chamber.
Some examples. Too many marketers talk about marketing as “their industry”. It’s not. They are instead professionals contributing towards their business in its own industry – banking, retail or whatever. This tribal motivation can bond us as a professional community, and focus us on functional deliverables, but it diverts us from the real contribution marketers can make to organisations, and their close allegiance and integration with cross-functional colleagues. The exception are the leaders and their teams who have repositioned themselves more holistically as Customer Director, Chief Growth Officer, and the like.
Secondly. Too many marketers have a far too cosy relationship with their creative agencies. It’s like they outsource their creativity to the agency, who still largely take a myopic view (of course, there are many types of agencies, but the ad agencies still tend to dominate relationships despite the diminishing share of spend on traditional media). Ad agencies themselves describe their world as “adland”, a mythical place of long lunches and artistic platitudes (witness the headlines in Campaign). This symbiotic relationship, indulgence in each other, is what holds too many marketers and their businesses back. Creative agencies should be stepping up to contribute more, to make sense of a changing world, to challenge and stretch our collective imaginations.
Too many marketers don’t step up to think strategically, to become the future shapers, the innovation drivers, the change makers. Too many marketers are still obsessed with communications, at the expense of other aspects of marketing – not just product and service development, but channels and pricing can have a huge impact too, perhaps even greater than the most beautifully crafted ad campaign.
Instead marketers should be the visionaries behind how the future can be shaped, how markets will evolve, anticipating and driving change rather than just responding. They should be searching the world for new growth opportunities, for new consumer insights, for more innovative ideas. They should be the architects of new business models, and indeed, new market models. New ways for markets to work, new ways to unlock brands as the most valuable assets, new ways to achieve success. They should be the driving force of business futures, the catalysts and sage to the business leader, the instigator and enabler of change.
So here’s my manifesto for marketers:
Growth Drivers
- Marketers exist to drive the growth of a business. Yet few marketers have the confidence, or maybe capability, to define and drive the holistic innovation and growth strategies of their organisations
- The pandemic drove the biggest shift in consumer behaviour in our lifetime, yet few marketers really transformed their marketing in response, fewer still led a company-wide response to support or seize the opportunities it opened up.
Change Makers
- Change is driven by markets, yet marketers are rarely the change drivers, reimagining corporate strategies, business models and strategic priorities.
- Customer-centricity is obvious. Yet marketers persist in obsessing about defining purpose, brands, activities and results around old product-centric thinking.
Business Innovators
- Innovation is probably the most powerful word in business, yet few marketers seek to define and lead the innovation agenda and programs across organisations. Not just new products, business-wide innovation.
- Most companies seek to be entrepreneurial. Their biggest disruption comes from entrepreneurs. Most entrepreneurs are marketers. Few marketers are entrepreneurial.
Value Creators
- Marketing creates three times more economic value than their operational colleagues, yet few marketers can make this case, or lead the company’s dialogue with investors. Oh, and growth needs to be profitable and sustainble too.
- Customers and brands are probably an organisation’s most valuable financial assets, yet few seek to articulate their value on balance sheets, or to fully exploit their latent potential.
Of course this is a development challenge too. I spend much of my time working on leadership development, and particularly on the T-Shaped development of functional experts as they step to become business leaders. At that point, typically when they enter the C-suite, they shift from the vertical (the focused, functional expert who has all the answers), to the horizontal (the open-mind business leader who asks all the questions). This is is a tough transition for many leaders to make, and is more about awareness and confidence as about capability or skill, but when they can let go of their vertical past, they can thrive.
Peter Fisk Q&A with Adlatina Media
When you came to Buenos Aires in 2019 and gave a lecture at the CMO Latam Summit, your big theme at that time was gamechanging. How much has the game changed since then?
Covid-19 has had huge impact on markets. Most significantly is the shift to digital platforms in work and life, from working and learning, to shopping and entertaining. Many retailers say we have seen a decade of change in one year.
However this is not simply about developing an online platform, it is about fundamentally different business models, that embrace a wide range of technologies. Big data and AI enable consumer experiences to be more personal and predictive. Robotics and 3D printing are rapidly transforming supply chains and manufacturing. This transforms sectors like retail and finance, but also transport and mining.
A great example of this would be Rappi from Colombia – the accelerated growth of the online delivery service, which is rapidly becoming a source for everything – not just grocery or restaurant deliveries. Other “super-apps” across the world, like Grab or Jio, have shown that once they embrace a financial engine, they become essential for everything to everyone. Mercado Libre is now starting to follow this model too.
Other examples would include PingAn, China’s largest financial services company, which extended into healthcare. It’s Good Doctor business now has a billion subscribers, offering AI-based patient diagnostics, video-streamed consultations, automated prescriptions and services, linked to physical clinics and hospitals. It is now the world’s largest online healthcare platform.
In your latest book “Business Recoded” you assert that business must be recoded. Do you think that the work of chief marketer officers should also be recoded?
Yes absolutely. Too many marketers are too obsessed about communications, and many are still stuck in the old world of advertising, being guided by their ad agencies to spend the majority of their budgets on old media.
The biggest disruption is in markets – (1) changing customers – new audiences, new priorities, new experiences – (2) changing sectors – blurred boundaries, new competitors, new business models – (3) changing geography – more pan-regional, reaching new geographies, new ecosystems.
The business, the CEO and executive team, need the CMO to be the pathfinder, to make sense of these fast-changing, uncertain and disrupted markets – to take the business in new directions, to drive innovation and growth.
CMO’s should most importantly champion the “growth plan” of the business, both short and longer-term. That doesn’t just mean how to engage existing customers in existing markets, but how to find new opportunities, to innovate in new ways.
The impact of a CMO being a “strategic growth leader” can change the market value of the company by 100% in a year (look at companies like NotCo in Chile, Nubank in Brazil, or more globally like Alibaba or Amazon, Tesla or Tencent).
The impact of a CMO being an “advertising guy” is probably 10% at most.
The CMO of Tesla doesn’t just focus on advertising cool cars, he is focused on how to develop the mobility network of the future – in a world where cars are autonomous, and nobody owns their own vehicle, people will subscribe to mobility operator networks. How is Tesla positioned to become the leader in this? In fact Tesla actually defines itself as an energy company, and is also focused on developing smart energy solutions for homes and cities. These are probably more valuable markets than cars!
Your new book “Business Recoded” is devoted to three major issues: inspiring leadership, strategic innovation and positive impact. How do these issues translate to the day-to-day life of a chief marketing officer?
Markets are the major source of change – rapidly disrupted and transformed. Marketers understand markets best, and should therefore be the catalysts and drivers of business change. (In the past, when markets were stable, most change happened internally, more driven by operational or culture leaders).
Also, sustainability has become much more important to customers and society, generally. The old model of sustainability was about reducing impact, about compliance and efficiency, now it is about using business and brands to create products and services. It is about creating brands as platforms for good, to engage customers, in changing behaviours, and driving more positive impacts. How can you have your product or service, and make the world better at the same time. A bit like the Toms shoes model, but applied in a commercial way to every kind of business.
Therefore CMOs are the drivers of growth and transformation, they are the executives who can make sense of the future, and find the path from today to tomorrow. Therefore their role is in
- Inspiring leadership – sense making, vision shaping, growth finding, future defining, path finding, change driving, business connecting.
- Strategic innovation – reimagining how markets work, new market models, new business models – as well as new experiences, products and services.
- Positive impact – building brands as platforms for good, to enable customers to make a positive difference to their lives, their communities, and the world.
What are the challenges posed by digital transformation, how are the most innovative companies tackling it, and what, in your opinion, is the new role of the CMO in this context?
The biggest challenge of “digital innovation” is the description – too many companies seek to digitalise their existing strategies and business models. They don’t reimagine why, where or how to do business, they just automate the old model.
The challenge if therefore “business transformation” and understanding how the new technologies can enable things which were not previously possible. For example, how a big data enables the largest companies to offer personalised products and services as efficiently as it is to create the same product for everyone. Or consider how brands can now sell direct to customers, no longer needing intermediaries, creating richer customer experiences. Or consider subscription models, or co-creation models, or licensing models.
Digital technologies gives us the opportunity to reimagine business in so many ways. Take the Canadian company Shopify, which creates complete “solutions” for the smallest local business to become a global player – to create their online store, but also to manage their global inventory and distribution, marketing and administration. More generally, how can you be the Adobe, the Glossier, the Netflix, the Paypal, the Stitchfix, the Stripe, the Zozo, of your industry?
This is a challenge of strategic imagination – the choices of what your business could do, are virtually unlimited today. We need the creative, market-driven minds of CMOs to explore and find the best opportunities, to make the case for change, and then engage and align the organisation in transformation towards a better future.
What will your main message be to the chief marketing officers attending the CMO Clinic?
Now is the time to reimagine your business. It’s time for CMOs to step up, to make sense of a changing world, to reinvent markets, and to recode business.
We will see more change in the next 10 years than the last 250 years. Change hugely accelerated by Covid-19. So as we get back to business, there is no going back to the old ways, we need to create the new ways of business.
Crisis has been a huge challenge, but now it can be a huge opportunity. We need CMOs with the courage to think different, to explore the future, and start to harness the power of the brands and business to create a better future.
Inspiring marketing leaders
So who are some of the world’s more enlightened marketers, the CMOs who are customer champions but also business innovators and growth drivers? Here are some examples:
Stephanie Buscemi, Salesforce
Salesforce’s CMO talks about the strategic challenge of building value in organisations, about brand purpose and promise. That purpose was is interesting. It gets thrown around with abandon, usually result in some mash-up of keywords which are neither understood or inspiring. Instead need real purpose, how the business will contribute towards a better world (in whatever way, not only around social-type issues), and then translating this into brands with real purpose, and made relevant for each person.
Chris Capossela, Microsoft
Microsoft’s CMO is “taking big swings: in the quest for success and discovering how failure is “the great instigator for growth.” What impresses me about working with Microsoft, one of my own biggest clients, is how they have real conscience, imagination and entrepreneurship. Their purpose is to enable customers to do more, not just sell products. This is where sales and marketing focus their effort (“your potential, our passion”) in tangible ways. They also truly embrace entrepreneurship – from design and lean thinking, to pizza teams and hackathons, debates on ethics and customers in their boardroom.
Carolyn Everson, Facebook
Facebook’s vice president of global marketing solutions leads the company’s relationships with top marketers and agencies. What’s interesting here is that Facebook is probably more of a media company than those associated with its agencies. In some ways its roles are therefore reversed compared to the norm. But the real power of a tech platform like Facebook, and Instagram and WhatsApp too, lies in its data, its networks, and power as platforms. Look, for example, at the rise of Instagram Shops, the development for social interaction, to a dynamic, realtime, platform for commerce.
Julia Goldin, Lego
Lego’s CMO discusses how tech presents massive opportunity for innovation and Lego’s approach to digital transformation. Lego is a great example of digital transformation because it is classically not a tech company, and still has a heart in physical play. The ability to recognise the brand asset as far more than a product umbrella, enables it to develop in terms of new markets – from clothing to crafting, movies and theme parks – not as adjacencies but as one story. Brands anchored around ideas (led godt, meaning creative play) rather than products or categories, can achieve so much more.
Marc Pritchard, P&G
P&G’s Chief Brand Officer explores a future of technology that is allowing brands to find new ways to reach the consumer. Pritchard recognises that with a portfolio like P&G’s he has the power and reach to do so much more in the world. His focus on sustainability, driving the entire organisation to transform its practices, but equally enabling customers to apply their own impact too, is worth copying. He achieves this as an organisational leader. People look to him for strategic direction, for business priorities, and for innovation. He also backs this up, by showing it matters, and the impact it makes. The focus is on profitable growth not just revenue or share (anyone can create share without profit), and linking it to DCFs and economic value creation. Ultimately he is the guy investors look to, and in the analyst reports, to understand the organisation’s future potential.
Phil Schiller, Apple
Apple’s outgoing SVP talks about the company’s role in empowering developers to create the future of technology. Schiller is stepping down after being the right hand man in a $2 trillion journey of growth. What is remarkable about Apple’s incredible performance of the last 10 years, is that it has grown to almost 10x the size of Steve Jobs’ era without a real focus on radical product innovation (yes they are great, but from a product perspective its been evolution than revolution). It’s more about how they evolved, particularly as an ecosystem – think App Store, or iTunes – and as a portfolio. Some innovations under Schiller, enabled by his phenomenal brand halo, include the AirPods, with a business model creating the equivalent of a $250 billion business. Indeed as a brand, Apple has continued to shine, reaching across the world, and to all of our lives.
More than anything, marketing and marketers, have the potential to be so much more. The next 10 years will see more change than the last 250 years. Right now, as we slowly emerge from pandemic, every market is being shaken up, the rules rewritten, a new generation of brands emerging.
Now is the time to seize the seismic changes in consumer behaviour and aspiration, economic shifts and technological revolution. Now is the time to be the future shapers, business innovators and growth drivers. To be the energising, mobilising, progressive leaders of business. To be the change makers.